Part 6

"John may be selfish and mean and all that, and I've no doubt he is; but he's not mean enough, he's not contemptible enough, to do what you think he's doing. I'll not believe that of him. I'd despise him if I thought so; I'd hate him!"

Her tears burst forth afresh, and she hid her face in her hands.

Mrs. Gault was nonplussed. She looked at her sister's shaken shoulders and bowed head with an uncomprehending but pitying eye. Then, as Letitia's sobs diminished, she said gloomily:

"How much jam did you buy?"

"Three dozen glasses," came the muffled answer.

"Good gracious!"--raising her eyes toward the ceiling in an access of horror. "What did you get so much for? Two or three would have done. We'll not get through that by Christmas." There was no answer made to this, and after a moment or two of silence Mrs. Gault recommenced, in a brisk and unemotional tone:

"I don't understand you at all, Tishy; but I do know that if you don't stop crying you'll look a perfect fright at dinner, and everybody will be wondering what's the matter with you."

This appeal to her pride had a good effect upon Letitia. She struggled with her tears and finally subdued them. But her flushed and swollen countenance needed much attention, and when Mrs. Gault left the room she carried with her a picture of her sister sitting before the mirror solicitously dabbing at her eyelids with a powder-puff.

When she appeared all traces of her previous distress seemed successfully obliterated. It remained for the eye of love to penetrate the restorative processes with which she had doctored her telltale countenance.

Near the end of dinner Tod McCormick, who sat beside her, leaned toward her and said, in the low tone of long-established friendship:

"What's the matter, Tishy? You look sort of bunged up."

Letitia said nothing was the matter--why?

The small, red-rimmed eyes of Tod passed over her face, lingering with the solicitude of affection upon the delicately pink eyelids and nostrils.

"You look as if you'd been crying," he said.

"Oh, what a silly idea!" answered Letitia, with a laugh that would have been quite successful on the stage, but could not deceive the enamoured Tod; "I have a cold."

"It's not that you don't look as pretty as usual. No matter what you did, you'd always be out o' sight. But it just gives me the willies to think of your being down on your luck. Honest--I can't stand it."

Letitia looked away, more to avert her face from his searching gaze than from embarrassment.

"Everybody gets blue now and then," she said carelessly.

"But you oughtn't to. I'm the one that ought to get blue--black and blue."

"I guess we all do, more or less."

"If you'd just ease up on the way you keep giving me the marble heart," continued Tod, dropping his voice to the key of tenderness, "I'd see to it that there'd never be a thing to make you blue. Everything would go your way. I'd see to it."

Letitia looked at him with a little vexed frown.

"Dear me, Tod!" she said crossly, "you're not going to propose to me here at dinner, are you, with everybody listening, too?"

Tod looked round rather guiltily. Letitia had exaggerated. The only person who appeared to be noticing them was Mrs. Mortimer Gault, and her glance immediately slipped away from his to give the signal for withdrawal to a lady at the other end of the table.

IV

The colonel's visits now followed John Gault's with businesslike regularity. One week from the afternoon when the younger man had paid his last call, Colonel Reed had made his customary appearance and proffered his customary request.

With each succeeding gift of money his spirits seemed to rise, his gracious bonhomie to become more pronounced. Upon this occasion he had said cheerfully, as he dropped the pieces of gold into his old chamois-skin purse:

"It's these unconscionable tradespeople that eat up our resources! Why can't a provident government arrange things so that we don't have to pay butchers and bakers and milkmen? Life would be so much better worth while if we could spend our money on clothes and books and entertaining our friends than in paying bills. Now, this"--jingling the gold in the purse--"goes to a son of Belial who sells us groceries on tick."

"Very kind of him, I should say," said the other. "Aren't you rather lucky to have such good credit?"

"Well, that's what I think," said the colonel, throwing back his head and laughing like an old prince in whom the joy of life and the desire of the eyes still burned strong; "but Viola thinks credit is a trap set by the king of all the devils."

"Women are apt to be cautious about that sort of thing."

"I don't know about all women, but Viola is. She is more afraid of credit than she is of smallpox. But I say to her: 'My dear, look where we would have been without it! And as long as these good, charitable souls will give us food and drink for nothing, for goodness' sake let them do it. Don't let's try and suppress such a worthy impulse.' Not, of course," said the colonel, growing suddenly grave and squaring his shoulders, "that we don't intend to pay them. We always do. Sometimes, it is true, we're rather slow about it; but eventually things are squared off to everybody's satisfaction. How else could we have the credit?"

He asked this question with an air of triumph that, to the listener, seemed to have something in it of conscious cunning. Gault answered with a commonplace about the advantage of inspiring so great a trust in the vulgar mind. The colonel was openly gratified.

"Oh," he said, as he moved toward the door, "there's something in the name of Ramsay Reed yet. But not enough," he added, laughing with a mischievous appreciation of the humor of his misfortunes, "to let a grocery bill run on indefinitely. There was a day when my name was good for any length of time--but that was thirty years ago."

Then he left, smiling and happy, and on the way home bought a pot of pâté de foie gras, a bottle of claret, and a handkerchief with an embroidered edge for Viola. At the grocery store on the corner of the street where he lived he stopped and paid twenty dollars on his bill, and then fared up the street with rapid strides, all agog with pleasure at the thought of Viola's delight in his present, and the jolly little supper they would have on the end of the kitchen table.

The man who had made these innocent pleasures possible was far from enjoying those sensations of gratification said to be experienced by a cheerful giver.

He had begun to know very dark hours. His first great love, come tardily and reluctantly, at an age when the heart is almost closed to soft influences and the mind is hardened with much worldly contact, had come poisoned with torturing suspicions, with shame for his own weakness, with fears of the truth.

Had he been a stronger man he would have torn up by the roots this passion for a woman he dared not trust, have gone away and tried to forget. But the lifelong habit of self-indulgence was too powerful to be broken. He did not want to try and live without the charm and torment of Viola's presence. Had he been weaker he would have yielded to the spell, never dared to question, and gone on blindly into the purgatory of those who love and doubt. All his life he had retained an ideal of womanhood--a creature aloof from the coarseness of worldly ambition and vulgar greed. Now he found himself bound to one the breath of whose life seemed to be tainted with duplicity and sordid intrigue.

At times his state of uncertainty became intolerable. Then he resolved to go to her, take her hands in his, and looking into her eyes, ask for the truth. But the world's lessons of a conventional reserve, a well-bred reticence, asserted their claims, and he found himself contemplating, with ironical bitterness, this picture of his own simplicity. If they were deceiving him, how they would laugh--laugh together--at the folly of the pigeon they were plucking so cleverly! A life's experience, caution, cynicism, had gone down into dust before a girl's gray eyes. Could she be false and those eyes look into his so frankly and honestly? Could those lips, that folded on each other in curves so full of innocence and truth, be ready with words of hypocrisy and deceit? When he was with her such thoughts seemed madness; when he was away from her his belief seemed a miserable infatuation.

After the colonel's last appearance he again determined to try and see her alone. This, he discovered, was not as easy of accomplishment as it had been on his first attempt. Arriving at the house at four o'clock, he rang repeatedly, but was not able to gain admittance. At last a small boy, who had been studying him through the bars of the gate, volunteered the information that the lady was out.

Gault turned away, and coming down the flagged walk, asked the child if he knew what direction she had taken.

"I dunno that," said the boy, "but she went out with her basket, and when she goes with her basket she generally stays a long while."

Gault rewarded him for his information with a piece of money, and turned down the street toward the other side of town.

It was a windy afternoon. The trades were just beginning, and their clear, chill sweep had already borne away some of the evil odors which hung about the old portion of the city. Gault could feel the touch of fog in their buoyant breath, and knew that long tongues of it like white wool were stealing in through the Golden Gate. The city was putting on its summer aspect--a gray glare, softened by the mingling of dust and haze that rode the breezes. Bits of paper, rags, and straws were collected at corners in little whirling heaps. Presently the mightier winds would come, winging their way across miles of heaving seas to rush down the street in a mad carouse, carrying before them the dirt and refuse and odors and uncleanness which mark the dwelling of man.

He had walked some distance when, rounding a corner, a sharp gust seized him. In its fierce exultation it threw a whirlwind of dust into his eyes, so that, for a moment, he did not see that she was coming toward him. Then he caught a glimpse of the approaching figure and recognized it. She did not see him, but was engaged in her customary amusement of looking into the gardens. There was an air of unmistakable alertness and gaiety about her. Her hand tapped the tops of the fence-rails as she came, and she looked at the floral display behind them with happy eyes. Her scanty black skirt was sometimes whirled round her feet, showing her small ankles and narrow russet shoes. Once she had to put up her hand to her hat,--a white sailor bound with a dark ribbon,--and the frolicsome wind swept all the loosened ends of her hair forward and lashed her skirts out on either side. She had a basket on one arm, and holding this firmly, leaned back almost on the wind, laughing to herself.

At the same moment she caught sight of him. The wind dropped suddenly, as if conscious that she should not be presented in such boisterous guise to a lover's eye, and her figure seemed to fall back into lines of decorous demureness; only the color and laughter of her recent buffeting still remained in her face.

"Is it you?" she cried. "Did you see me in the wind? Isn't it fun?"

They met, and he took her hand. She was all blown about, but fresh as a flower that has shaken off the dew. The contrast between them, between what might be called their different ranks in society, was much more clearly marked in the open light of the street than in the ragged homeliness of her own parlor.

While he was essentially the man of luxurious environment and assured position, she presented the appearance of a working-girl. Even the delicacy and refinement of her face could not counteract the suggestion of her dress. Beauty when unadorned may adorn the most, but it cannot give to ill-made old clothes the effect of garments made by a French modiste. John Gault was used to women who wore this kind of clothes--so used, in fact, that he hardly knew what made Viola appear so different from the other girls of his acquaintance. The contrast in their looks seemed to mark more clearly the contrast in their positions, seemed to purposely accentuate that wide gulf set between them.

Gault took her basket from her and dropped into place at her side. The high rows of houses protected them from the wind, and only as they crossed the open spaces at the intersection of streets did it catch them, and, for a moment, play boisterously with them.

The girl seemed in excellent spirits. He had noticed this with every recurring visit. Looking back upon her as she was when he had first known her, care-worn, pale, and quiet, she seemed now like a different person. Her glance sparkled with animation, her voice was full of that thrilling quality which some women's voices acquire in moments of happiness. She was a hundred times more fatally alluring than she had been in the beginning. He knew now that while he was with her his reason would always be in abeyance to his heart.

"You seem to be in very good spirits," he said to her, not without a feeling of personal grievance that some cause of which he was ignorant should add so to her lightness of heart.

"I am," she answered. "I'm in very good spirits. I'm quite happy. It's something lovely to feel so gay in your heart, isn't it?"

"I don't know; maybe I've never felt so."

"Oh, what nonsense!" she cried, looking at him reproachfully. "You, who have always had just what you wanted! I used to be afraid of you at first. It seemed rather awful to know anybody who'd always had things go exactly their way."

He ignored the remark and said:

"What's making you happy? Tell it to me, and then perhaps I'll get a little reflection of it."

"I don't know that it's any one especial thing. Happiness comes when lots of little things fit nicely together. I never had one big thing in a lump to make me happy. I tell you what's doing a good deal toward it. Father and I are"--she made an instant's pause and then said--"doing so much better; financially, I mean. It's such a relief! You don't know."

He turned and looked at her and met her eyes. They looked rather abashed, and then fell away from the scrutiny of his.

"You don't think it queer of me to tell you that, do you?" she asked. "I tell you a good many things I wouldn't say to other people."

"I am proud that you should have such confidence in me."

"Well," she continued, with a quick sigh of relief, "we've been lately--that is, just about when we first knew you, and before that--really quite badly off. And my father being so sanguine, and having once been so differently situated, it's very hard on him--very hard."

She paused, and he felt that she was looking at him for confirmation of her remark.

"Very; I quite understand," he answered.

"And, really, it was dreadful. It's trying for old people--so much anxiety. And then, just at the very worst, things suddenly brightened. Just about a month or six weeks ago the luck changed. You must have been the mascot."

This time he looked at her, but her glance was averted.

"Go on," he said, thinking that his voice sounded strange.

"Because it was after we knew you that things began to get better. I was angry with my father that first day when he asked you in, because I didn't want you to see how--how straitened we were. There's a pride of poverty, you know; well, I suppose I must have a little bit of it. Everything was at its worst then. But now it's all different. You've been the mascot."

He again felt her eyes surveying him, but found it impossible to look at her. In his heart he was afraid of what he might read in her face.

"Don't you like being a mascot?" she queried, in her happy girl's voice. "You don't look as if you did."

"I'm proud and flattered, probably too much so for speech."

"I'm glad, because that's what you were. There's no getting out of it. I'll tell you how it happened. My father used to own a great deal of stock in mines and companies and things, and when everything went down so fast, he sold almost all of it. But some he kept. He had it put away in the drawers of his desk up-stairs in his room, and about two months ago it began to go up, and now it pays dividends and we get them. Isn't that good luck?"

She was close to him, looking into his face. He turned his head this time and confronted her with a steady gaze. In the harsh afternoon light every curve and line of her countenance was revealed. Her eyes were full of light and joy. His glance met and held them for one searching moment, then turned away baffled.

"Very good luck. I congratulate you," he said.

"You may well," she answered. "I'd given up expecting good luck ever any more in this world. I believe in it, and my father's had come and gone almost before I was born, and mine--mine hasn't come yet, I suppose."

"Unless you discover some more old stock in the pigeonholes of the desk."

"Oh, I don't think that's likely. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place."

"What was the stock? Mining stock?"

She seemed in doubt for a moment, then said:

"Yes, I think so--yes, surely, mining stock."

"Do you remember the name of the mine?"

He glanced at her as she walked beside him. She appeared to be cogitating.

"I don't believe I do," she answered at length. "To tell you the truth, I don't believe my father mentioned it to me. I'm very stupid about business. I've never had any necessity to know about it, and so I've never learned."

"How long had it been lying in the desk?"

"Oh, years and years! Probably twenty. It was a relic of the days when everything was booming."

"If he's been paying assessments on it all these years, he ought certainly to be repaid now."

He was scrutinizing her sharply. Her profile was toward him, and at this remark he saw the color mount into her cheek, and that curious appearance of immobility come over her face which denotes a sudden, almost electric stoppage and then concentration of mental activity. She raised her head and said, without looking at him:

"Assessments are a yearly or semi-yearly payment, aren't they?"

"Yes, or quarterly--according to the way the stock is drawn."

"But isn't there some that is non-assessable? I've surely heard that expression."

"In other States, but in California--well, possibly there might be."

"I'm sure there must be. This of my father's must have been." She came quite close to him in her earnestness, and looked at him with an expression of uneasiness on her face.

"It must have been that kind," she insisted; "probably you never heard of this mine."

"Probably I never did," he answered grimly.

They walked on for a few moments in silence. There was a visible drop in her spirits. Stealing a side glance at her, he could see that she was looking down, evidently in troubled thought. Suddenly she raised her head and said:

"Well, I don't really know anything about it. Only I do hope one thing, and that is that it will go on paying."

"Don't bother about that," he said; "it will."

"What makes you think it will?"

He turned on her roughly and said:

"Don't you think it will?"

"I'd like to think so," she answered, abashed by his unusual manner; "but I've learned that it's foolish to hope. I try not to."

He gave a short, disagreeable laugh and said:

"Oh, not in this case. Hope as much as you like."

"You're very cheering," she answered; "but I don't see how you can be so sure."

"It seems to me you're very pessimistic--especially for a young woman who has just found a drawerful of paying stock."

His manner in making this remark was so impregnated with angry bitterness that Viola, chilled and repelled, made no response. In silence they walked onward till a turn in the street brought them in sight of the house.

At the gate she said rather timidly:

"Would you like to come in?"

He had been carrying the basket, and now found the depositing of it in a place of safety an excuse to enter; for even in his present state of morose ill humor he could not forego the pleasure of a few more moments of her society.

In the cold, half-furnished house their footsteps echoed with a strangely solitary effect. She preceded him into the parlor, and moved about with the confident tread of the chatelaine, pulling up the blinds, putting the basket out of sight, and laying aside her hat and gloves. There were some thin flowered muslin curtains hanging over the bay-window, and she arranged the folds of these with deft, proprietary touches, and then stepped back and studied the effect.

After watching her for a moment the visitor said in a tone of restored amiability:

"Aren't those something new?"

She looked at him with quick, grateful recognition of his change of mood.

"Yes; do you like them? I changed my mind about a dozen times before I bought them. Even now I don't know whether I'm entirely satisfied."

"Oh, you ought to be," he said, as he drew near and eyed the curtains with the air of a connoisseur; "I'm sure you couldn't have chosen anything prettier."

Viola's spirits rose to the level they had been at when he met her earlier in the afternoon. Her eyes brightened and her face took on its most animated expression.

"They're another outward and visible sign of the rise in mining stock," she continued. "I'm so glad you noticed them without my having to make you do so."

"Do you want to know why I did?"

"Because they were pretty, of course."

"Not at all. I was looking at you as you arranged them, and wondering why a pair of curtains should be so much more interesting than I was."

"What made you think they were?"

"Because you were devoting yourself to them and coldly ignoring me."

"That was because I was a little bit frightened of you. You were so cross just now, before we came in, that I didn't know what to say to you."

"I cross? What a calumny! I was in my sweetest humor."

She looked at him mischievously.

"If you call that your sweetest humor, all I can think is that you're not as clever as you pretend to be."

"I'm afraid I'm not. For example, I'm not clever enough to understand you--a little girl like you, scarcely half my age."

"Am I really such a sphinx?"

"You are to me."

"I like that," she said, smiling, and gathering up the edge of the curtain in a frill; "I don't want everybody to see through me. But you're different."

"How am I different?"

"You're more a friend than other people--more a friend than anybody else I know. Tell me what you don't understand about me, and I'll explain it. I won't leave myself a single secret."

Though he was standing close to her, looking down at her, he suddenly dropped his voice to the key that was the lowest she could hear.

"If I only dared to ask, and you would only tell the truth."

"Dared to ask!" she repeated blankly, alarmed and upset by his singular change of manner.

"And you would tell the truth," he added, and heard his own voice sound suddenly husky and shaken. "Tell it to me now!"

"I always do," she stammered.

"No matter what it is," he continued, as if he had not heard her--"no matter how it may hurt me or injure you."

The color ran over her face and as quickly ebbed away, leaving her pallid. It might have been the confession of innocence or the confusion of guilt. She looked nervously from side to side, raised her eyes to his, and dropped them again.

"There are always a few things a person can't tell," she almost whispered.

He gave an ugly laugh, and put his arm half round her as if to draw her to him, then drew back as quickly, and turning away, walked to the window. Viola did not seem to have noticed the attempted caress. There was a moment of penetrating silence. He wondered if she could hear his heart beat.

Then she said:

"Why do you say such strange things? I always tell you the truth."

To his listening ear her voice sounded affectedly naïve. He answered without moving:

"Of course you do. So do all women since the days of Eve."